Customer Reviews

Tome and Blood: A Guidebook to Wizards and Sorcerers

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Wizards must have for D&D

well I got tome and blood for my birthday and I was looking through and I found some alright prestige classes. after a while I read a little bit farther in the prestige class section and found the Dragon Disiple. Since I am a sorcerer I was Amazed.It is literally the best Persige Class is the entire book. after thati look at the spells and I found the lesser acid orbs. they are like magic missle except a bit better.(at least i thin they are better. all in all i think this is a pretty good book.

"Tome and Blood" is a fairly good supplement with a wide variety of useful feat, interesting prestige classes, and a couple of good spells. Some of the prestige classes, "The Acolyte of the Flesh" and the "Alienist" for example, would be hard pressed to be useful for a player character but would be nice NPC's.

I was slightly disappointed at the variety of schools, lots of innovation for necromancy, but the other schools, particularly illusion seemed to get short handed.

Also, compared to some of the d20 licensee products like Fantasy Flight Games's "Spells and Spellcraft" or Malhavoc Press's "Eldritch Might" series, this was pretty expensive for the amount of information given.

This book is good only for explaining the metamagic feats more realistically.

Beyond that, it's practically useless.

I bought it because the books I bought for the druid and bard classes were so helpful, and I thought I'd get more help with my wizard/sorcerer characters.

I should be so lucky.

The book lacks many new spells that I think are particularly useful to lower-level players.

The main reasons one would buy this book is for a more clear definition between a sorcerer and a wizard, and because it explains the metamagic feats in a more useful way than the players handbook does.

This book has some good new arcane spells, especially some low to mid level combat spells which add a great deal of potential power to your wizards. There are some interesting new familiars and several magic items, a few of which are useful, and several prestige classes. There is a much needed fighter / wizard prestige class which (eventualy) has the ability to wear armor while casting spells.
A few of the other prestige classes are either useful or at least intersting (like the "Alienist" class, a thinly veiled Lovecraft cultist type done up in an amusing manner, and the candle making class which uses candles like potions or scrolls). Some of the other prestige classes are downright silly and / or unusable unless you are running a very cartoonish campaign.

Like most of the books in this series, this one has a lot of filler, including a fairly useless section on wizardly orders and an almost completly superfluous chapter all about a certain particular wizardly hideout.

Overall though far from perfect, this is a suppliment which even the most demanding D20 player or GM should get some use out of. The new spells alone are worth the price.

I've only been playing D&D for two years now, and this is the first "Guidebook" I've bought, as the word "Guidebook" is misleading.

It is more or less a bunch of new rules for (mainly) Sorcerors and Wizards. Here is what I think of each chapter:

Chapter 1: Arcane Lore
This chapter has a whole bunch of stuff, but around half of it is only useful to DMs, and only in a limited way. The first half or so is about how to play a caster, tips on choosing spells, but some of it is stating the obvious (ex: "Sorcerors need to choose their spells carefully"). But most of this half of the chapter is useful. The rest of the chapter is about various arcane organizations, and is quite interesting to read, but probably only useful to DMs when planning a campaign. It also has a map of a Wizard's Keep, which IS useful, but seems more of a filler. The random peculiar items is funny though. This chapter also has some new familiars, which is nice.

Chapter 2: Feats
Mostly a bunch of new Metamagic feats that are actually worth taking! Every wanted a fireball exploding in 4 10-foot columns. Take the Scult spell feat. Ever wanted an exploding iceball that electricutes people? Use Energy Substitution and Energy Admixture on a fireball. Very cool stuff here.

Chapter 3: Prestige Classes
A lot of interesting Prestige classes here, I will probably end out playing all of them eventually except the Candle Caster (which is quite cool, but I'd rather stick with Scribe Scroll than taking up a whole 'nother class to do something only a bit better) and the Wayfarer Guide (I teleport enough people around in EverQuest). The Blood Magus is definately unbalanced, DMs beware if you allow this class. The Dragon Disciple is a very close second, though you won't be casting any higher level spells taking this class. Then the Pale Master follows Dragon Disciple in brokeness, getting Summon Undead as a supernatural ability AND natural armor! C'mon! Mindbender could also be considered broken, as could Mage of the Arcane Order (you basically gain access to every single arcane spell with this class). Some prestige classes are rather useless (Arcane Trickster, Spellsword), but would still be fun to play.

Chapter 4: Tools of the Trade
A bunch of (useful) magic items that could not normally have been made before.

Chapter 5: Spells
Yes. These are all great spells, and I've replaced my magic missile with Orb spells now.

And finally the price. I bought the core rulebooks ...(I think the Monster Manual was more, I don't remember though). But they were a good deal in the first place ...but still I think these kind of book should at most have been less expensive, if not 5 or 6.

I'm a real D&D fanatic, so I'll buy ANYTHING that may have a good spell in it or a new prestige class. A few of the prestige classes in this book were worth a second look, but most of them were, I'm afraid, real space-fillers -- workable but bland and colorless. The new spells were worth the price of the book for me-- there aren't too many of them, but they fill some gaps in the spell lists and make playing a wizard or sorceror more satisfying.

To me, this book should be about metamagic feats, familiars, magic items and spells. Lots of spells. Unfortunately, most of the good spells went to the PHB, so you get the odd ones and "school fillers" in this book. Great for surprising a foe every once in while, but few are keepers.
The feats are particularly nice, especially Energy Admixture (adding another type of energy to a spell, such as say Sonic damage to a Fireball - a screaming fireball?).
The upgrade familiars are nice - its good to see the psuedodragon back, and presented in a balanced format.
The prestrige classes are a bit much (especially the Dragon Initiate), but in these books at least one tends to stand out as "kick butt" and all of them are interesting.
The information on magic schools and dwellings are mere filler and could have better been used for creative spell use, magic items or something more worthwile.
Unfortunately, there isn't much information in the book to differeniate between sorcerers and wizards, which the game really needs.

Okay, liked 'Tome & Blood'. Let me start with what I liked about it. The prestige classes were very interesting, and seem to be fairly well balanced. My personal favorite is the Blood Magus. Really liked the 'Fun with Prestidigitation' section; it reads like a 'Dragon' article, and gave me some great ideas on how to use this under-appreciated spell. Some great new spells, too, like the spells allowing you to fix damage to constructs, although it's not clear whether they can be used on, say a simulacrum, which in the PH requires a set ritual, gold and time to repair. The sections on organizations were well done, and the sample wizard's home was intriguing. Overall a very good effort, and mostly worth the money.

Things that kept T&B from being a '5'? Well, it's a bit pricey for the info you get. At fewer than 100 pages, and softcover to boot, it's one-third the pages at half the cost of, say, the PH or any of the other core rulebooks. I would have liked to see more spells--a lot more. There are a couple of points in T&B where it seems a little, well, padded, like they ran out of ideas but couldn't bring themselves to charge for that few pages.

Overall, I recommend this book. It gives some breadth to your arcane spellcasters (some decent feats, too!), and really helps flesh them out.

I hated this book. There weren't a lot of interesting things in there for me to explore. I mean, sure, Dragon Disciple, Acolyte of the Skin, Arcane Trickster, Blade Singer, and Blood Magus (especially blood magus) are good prestige classes , the rest blow! I mean, a spellsword? Oh my, you can cast spells through your sword! Big deal! Or the candle caster? That's the queerest prestige class I've ever seen in my life. The feats suck. I've never been one for metamagic feats, and that is the majority of the feats in there. The new spells aren't that great, either. The biggest plus was the familiars. I would love to have a shocker lizard or pseudodragon.

Other people praise this book like it is a godsend. I personally don't prefer magic users, though I was one for a while because my party didn't have one. But now my friend, a bard, can cast a lot of spells, so I'm ditching my wizard for a rogue. That is probably the reason why I don't like the book. I'm not big on magic.